Somewhere In-Between (11 page)

She noticed the dark visitors daily after that. Others joined it, perching in the trees behind Julie's golf course home. In the morning she could hear the scratching of their feet on the shake roof, as if chiding her for lying in bed, nagging her to get up, get up and get on with life. They became her constant companions, even showing up out here. She began to think, to hope in a small secret place in her heart, that it was Darla trying to communicate with her. Then she remembered Darla telling her once that the crow was Levi's totem, his spirit guide, and she recalled seeing him place his crow pendant around Darla's neck that night.

Now, whenever she encounters the birds, she is overcome with aversion to them, can only think of them in their mythical role as harbingers of death.
You're too late
, she thinks angrily as two swoop down from the sky. Their barking cries trail behind as they glide above her with liquid strokes and disappear around the bend. An unexpected shiver passes through her despite the warmth of the day. The road winds on, leading closer to the lakeshore, then wandering away again as it cuts through the forest. The crows' raspy voices grow louder as she approaches a fork in the road. To her right a narrow logging trail leads up to the timbered hillside. She stays on the lower road, and on the next turn comes upon the reason for the cacophonous cries. A few yards ahead, on the side of the road is the limp body of a dead bird. She recalls reading somewhere that finding a dead crow is good luck.
Good luck for whom
, she thinks wryly. Certainly not the crow, or his companions who are gathered around their fallen brother. Except for in old black-and-white movies she has never seen so many gathered together in one place, hadn't even realized that there were flocks this size in the area. Some hop about on the ground near the lifeless pile of ebony feathers. Others blacken the branches of the fir tree above, their raucous ‘caws' filling the air as if they can will the dead bird to take wing. Julie approaches slowly. No elbow wing of feather lifts in threatened flight as she stands before them. Despite her aversion, something about the scene, the connection between these animals, their concern for their comrade, brings the pressure of tears to her eyes. She blinks them back, and slowly slides the strap from her shoulder. Picking up the camera she removes the leather cover with a gentle, soundless touch and lifts it, closing one eye to focus on the gathering of mourners. At the first shutter click, a few birds lift in flight. Julie's finger continues pressing,
click… click… click
. The cries become more urgent, and a flurry of wings lift in unison. She continues to shoot as they rise up, capturing images of the black wave swimming into the blue sky.

As she lowers the camera, her refocusing eyes catch a movement in the shadows beyond the abandoned tree. At first her brain refuses to make sense of the hulking dark form. A wavering black stump? A large dog? Without thinking she raises the camera and zooms in on the apparition. The automatic focus turns the blur into the form of a black bear. Julie's shaking finger involuntarily presses down.
Click.
The huge head lifts, then in one smooth movement the animal stands upright on its hind legs. Towering over the underbrush, its menacing clawed paws held up in front of its eerily human form, the bear sniffs the air.

Her heart pounding in her ears Julie takes a tentative step backwards. The animal turns toward the sound. Everything she has read scrambles in her head as she freezes in its stare. Is she supposed to meet his gaze, or avoid it? Unable to look away, she tries frantically to recall the instructions for a bear encounter.
Back away slowly; wave your arms to identify yourself as human. Speak calmly.

She cannot find her voice. She lifts her suddenly heavy arms and takes a tentative step back, panic rising in her throat.

Bears want to avoid you as much as you want to avoid them. If a bear gets too close…
The bear spray! The camera drops to the ground as she grabs blindly at her belt. Still standing upright the bear swings his head from side to side, and lets out a loud grunt. Julie's fumbling fingers find the leather case, snap it open and free the can of bear spray. With trembling hands she raises it up, pointing it like a gun in front of her. The bear drops to all fours.

Activate spray if the animal comes to within fifteen feet.

She can't possibly wait until he is within fifteen feet. She turns and bolts into the bush on the other side of the road. Dodging between the trees, branches snapping around her, she crashes through the undergrowth, stumbling as her foot slips on a moss-covered boulder. Unable to keep her balance she pitches forward, arms flailing. She hits the ground with such force that the wind is knocked out of her and the spray can flies from her grasp. Her crash landing is punctuated by what sounds like the blast of a horn. Deafened by a ringing in her ears she thrusts herself up on all fours, frantically trying to scramble away. Rose bush thorns and brambles claw at her clothes, holding her back and she steals a frantic glance over her shoulder. A few yards behind, in the flickering shadows, a dark blur is closing in on her.

She slumps to the ground. Throwing her arms over the back of her head, she forces her body to remain still.
If all else fails play dead.

The commotion behind her abruptly ends. After a silence that seems to last forever, she lifts an arm to peek back, and finds, standing behind her, their tenant Virgil Blue.

She rolls over onto her back, her heart still racing, and pushes herself up on her elbows. “The... bear?”

Virgil holds up a red-and-white can. An air horn. The kind she has seen at hockey games. An involuntary nervous laugh rises and she slumps back to the ground. Taking a moment to catch her breath, she studies her rescuer. Instead of a cowboy hat, a sweat-stained black cotton skullcap—the sort bikers wear under their helmets—covers his head. The slanted sunlight exposes his face and the calm concern there.

After a moment Julie sits up. Tugging away barbed twigs and branches from her clothes, she looks back up at him and says, “I'm fine, thank you.” Only after the words are out does it occur to her that he hasn't asked. But the question is clear in his dark eyes, and in the arm he is holding out, offering her a hand up. The hand she had refused to accept last month. Swallowing her pride, and her shame, she grabs his forearm and lets him pull her to her feet, stumbling against him as she rises. His plaid flannel shirt smells of freshly cut wood, and horsehide. The warmth of his skin against hers, the shock of touching another person—when was the last time she had actually touched anyone?—leaves her unsettled, confused, and she steps back quickly.

She hurries to stay close behind him on the way back to the road, glancing around at every step for any sign of the bear. There is none, just the two massive Clydesdales standing on the road, their hides twitching beneath leather harnesses while they wait patiently for their driver.

“You were working,” Julie says kneeling down to retrieve her camera.

Without responding to her, Virgil lets out a long whistle. Seconds later, his dog, which Julie has only seen from a distance, comes streaking through the underbrush where the bear had stood. Close up, the grey-and-black dog is much larger than Julie had thought. If she had encountered him alone she might easily have mistaken him for a wolf. As it is, she's relieved that Virgil is between them as the dog approaches. But then, belying his menacing appearance, he lopes over with his tongue lolling out and sits panting at his master's side, happily accepting the rewarding scratches to the back of his ears.

As Julie stumbles to find the right words to thank him, Virgil nods curtly and turns away. Stunned at his rebuke she stands watching him walk back to his team of horses.
Well, okay, I guess I deserved that.
Returning her camera to its case she notices with a twinge of disappointment that the lens has shattered.

After stroking the horses' necks and withers, Virgil reclaims the reins from where they lay on the ground behind the animals massive haunches. Their tails switching flies away, the Clydesdales swing their heads around to watch him.

“Wait, I, uh, I,” Julie hesitates then rushes forward. “Please. I need to talk with you.” Virgil holds up a hand to still her. As he does so she notices the odd angles of his left thumb and forefinger, and for a moment wonders how such a deformed hand could be responsible for such beautiful music.

While she watches from the side of the road, with the lightest of touch on the leather straps, Virgil signals the horses to alertness. Using only the language of a clicking tongue and pursing lips he manoeuvres them around on the narrow road. Julie hops out of the way until the team is facing the other direction.

Frustrated, she hurries to keep up as they head home. This man and his dog have just saved her life. She at least owes him a better attempt at making peace with him. “Mr Blue,” she says, when she reaches his side, “I'd like to apologize for my behaviour the other day.”

With no visible prompt, the horses stop in their tracks and stand motionless, each with one hind leg resting. Virgil turns to face Julie. Taking both reins in one hand he touches his lips with the other, a mime's gesture, then tugging at the red bandanna on his neck he pulls it down to expose the laryngeal scar in the V hollow of his breast bone. It's the same scar her father wore after his throat cancer surgery.

“Oh, I'm sorry,” she says. “I didn't know.”

He replaces the scarf. One click of his tongue and the horses plod forward again. During the silent walk home, Julie wonders why in the world Ian has neglected to mention that Virgil is mute. Even odder yet is the glimmer of warmth she feels over having made peace with this man. A feeling, which at one time she would have defined as happiness.

Happiness. The word has a world of different meaning to different folks. To him, it brought to mind a memory, an image hidden away in the darkened corridors of time. A young boy sitting in a dimly lit kitchen.

The year 1959. The place Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the distance between the paved tree-lined streets of town, and the dirt roads of the country, was an easy walk, and a hard world away. On the darkened road of a mobile home park, in front of an aluminum-sided house trailer, a patch of crabgrass encroached on the gravel path leading to the porch. Marigolds struggled to bloom on either side of the wooden steps. Inside, the edges of a yellow gingham curtain lifted in the evening breeze, letting in the scratchy light from a distant yard lamp. A fringed swag lamp hung over a rescued chrome kitchen table. One man's trash; another family's treasure. The boy sat with his family, the dinner dishes cleared. The air still carried the waxy aroma from the seven, blown-out make-a-wish, birthday candles lying in the chocolate crumbs on the cake platter. On the tabletop next to it, covering the remnants of other families' stains and scratches, sat a gaily wrapped long rectangular box, reused ribbon trailed from a blue bow, tied by his mother's hands. He met her dark eyes across the table, proud eyes that reflected his ancestral heritage—tired eyes. Eyes that today betray how anxious she is for him to love her gift. He will, he promised himself; her desire to please him was enough, more than enough, because whatever was inside the box, whatever she had purchased, he knew was with her sweat and by no one else's generosity.

His stepfather—absent since his sister, Melody, was born four years ago—had fled under the pressure of another mouth to feed. His fifteen-year-old twin brothers did what they could to help their mother, who worked two jobs to carry them. They were already chomping-at-the-bit to enlist in the army, to earn their way. Even now they teased their mother at the table that all
they
want for their birthdays when they turn seventeen, is her signature allowing them to join up. They could send money home every month, they promised.
Give you army rifles for your birthday? Eh?
She shook her head, clucking her tongue and ignored their pleas.

The boy thought it wasn't such a bad idea. Perhaps then she could quit her night job and start living on more than four hours of sleep. Maybe if they had enough money, their mother would give in to the letters from the north, asking her to return home to her people in the Chilcotin country of Canada—a country and a people that the boy only knew of from old photographs and his mother's sparse stories.

He looked down at the box. He didn't want to open it. Given his mother's distaste for anything to do with guns he knew he would not find the white straw hat, fringed chaps, holster and pistols he has coveted to play out his solitary cowboy fantasies. If he could, he would leave the box unopened. He would keep it on the shelf above his bed beside the photograph of his father and just look at it. It would save him from being disappointed by some plastic water-launcher from Kresge's, or perhaps a brand new pair of trousers and a shirt, instead of the church-bazaar discards he wore every day. Better to leave it unopened and hang onto the dream of being a cowboy—like the father he never knew.

But she, they, would not let him ignore the gift. His little sister clapped her hands.
Hurry, open it, open it.
His brothers, Jackson and Jerome, flashed white-toothed grins.
C'mon lil' brother.
His mother smiled quietly, she would not betray her anticipation. But he knew. It was greater than his own.

His hands moved slowly. Long thin fingers untied the trailing ribbon and carefully removed it, along with the bow, with painful precision. He sorted them, rolled them all up into a tiny blue ball to be used once again and placed it on the table beside the box. He removed the squares of Scotch tape from the folds at each end, turned the box over and ran a finger along the joined edges. Lifting the paper with great care, he removed it and smoothed it out then folded it into a neat square, while his impatient brothers rolled their eyes. Placing the wrapping paper next to the ribbon, he turned the cardboard box right side up. Avoiding his mother's eyes, not wanting her to witness the disappointment in his at the moment of discovery, he concentrated on sliding his thumbnail over the tape running down the join in the middle. He lifted the cardboard flaps, at the same time squeezing his eyelids shut. After a moment he slowly opened them—and looked down to discover the impossible. The gift was so unexpected, and so precious to her, that he had never allowed himself to wish for it. Inside the box, lying on a layer of tissue, its gleaming wood smelling of his mother's furniture polish, was pure joy—happiness—in the shape of his father's violin.